Trees Every Child Should Know: Easy Tree Studies for All Seasons of the Year

by Julia Ellen Rogers

VALUABLE SAP OF TREES

In early spring on the New Hampshire hillsides, the sap begins to mount the trunks of the sugar maple trees, dissolving the sugar stored in the wood cells during the previous summer. It is time for the making of maple sugar. Winter is over. Spring work has begun.

Hundreds of twigs of elder have been cut in short lengths, and the pith pushed out, to make “spiles.” Holes are bored in the trunks of the trees, and in each hole one of these hollow spiles is driven. These are the little spouts that drain the sap from the tree into the waiting buckets that stand or hang below. Drip, drip, drip, the sweet sap flows into the buckets; and as often as they fill, the farmer makes the rounds of the trees with barrels on a low sled or “stone boat,” emptying the buckets.

The sap he gathers is poured into the evaporating pans in the sugar house, and a roaring fire keeps it boiling. As the water goes off in steam, the remainder becomes maple syrup, which thickens as it boils. Skimming and straining removes any dirt or chips that fall into the sap. When it is just thick enough, the syrup is drawn off into cans, and sealed to be sent to market. A part of it, however, is boiled longer, and when drawn off, and cooled, it crystalises into the granular yellow maple sugar. It is cooled in shallow pans that hold a certain amount, and thus the bricks of maple sugar are formed. Little heart-shaped cakes are made by filling “patty pans” with this heavy syrup.

As long as the sap flows in sufficient quantities, the sugar harvest goes on. If the trees are bored with care, with holes not too close together, the tree will stand this draining from year to year, and seem not to be injured by the loss of sap. If the holes are close together, and extend all around the trunk, the tree will be practically girdled and it will die from the injury.

The finest kind of maple sugar is the wax which is made by pouring heavy syrup on the snow to cool. Quickly it thickens by the cold into stringy yellow wax, which tastes like other maple sugar, but does not have the unpleasant gritty feeling, which sets some teeth on edge. Maple wax may be made at home, by melting the sugar, and pouring it into snow; but the time and the place to enjoy it most, is in the sugar camp when the hot syrup is poured from the long-handled ladle onto the nearest snow bank by the person who is in charge of the boiling. The cold air of the woods puts a keen edge on the appetite. The warm fire under the boiler takes off the chill, and the silent woods all around give a charm to the scene which one does not feel in any other place.

Hickory sap is sweet. This is sometimes added to that of the maples when maple trees are scarce.

The sap of pine trees is a liquid called resin. The pine forests of the South are rich stores of this resin, which we call also pitch. The crude liquid drained from these trees is heated, and a light liquid called turpentine is drawn off. The remainder hardens, and is known as rosin. The pine trees are tapped, not as the sugar trees of the North are, but in a way that is far more injurious to the trees. Resin hardens into gum when exposed to the air, so it is impossible to draw it out through small tubes like spiles of elder that drain the maple sap. A great gash is cut in the side of the trunk of a pine tree, forming a pocket holding three pints or more. Now a square foot or more of the bark above the pocket is cut off, and the wood is chipped to a depth of an inch or more. The bleeding surface of the wood fills the pocket below with resin, and a man comes around with pails and dipper to empty these pockets as fast as they fill. The pails are carried to a still, where the resin is poured into a tank and heated to draw off the limpid turpentine.

Once a week, from March till November, more bark and wood, above the scored surface, must be chipped to renew the flow of resin. If this fresh wounding did not occur, the flow would cease, because the resin thickens and hardens when exposed to the air. This stops up the pores of the wood.

Fortunes have been made by the draining of these pine trees of their rich, pitchy sap. Turpentine and tar and rosin are all products of the sap of pines, and all are immensely valuable, especially in shipyards, and in the provisioning of sea-going craft of all sorts. The term, “naval stores,” has been applied to the products of turpentine gathering. Our forests supply most of these products to other countries.